Bored with self. Tell me something fun/interesting/amusing/scary/terrible/wonderful. Haiku optional.

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Those of you who see me in real life have probably heard me talk about potty training my cat. I'm working on it, but last night we ran into a bit of a snag.

The trick is, or so I've read, that you gradually make changes. You slowly raise up the litter box, while slowly cutting down the sides of the box, and slowly reducing the amount of litter inside. Then you slowly move it over to the top of the toilet and slowly cut a hole and then very gradually make the hole larger until your cat is perching upon the toilet seat to do his business. That's the theory.

Of course, I've never been a patient person. I was encouraged when Theo followed his litter box from the floor to the toilet in one huge jump. Perfect! I thought. This is all going to happen in no time! Not so.

All last week, Theo was eliminating in the bottom of a cardboard box strapped to the toilet seat. I cut the sides down to about two inches, covered the whole thing in plastic, added litter, and bungee-corded it to the toilet seat. Yesterday, I figured he was ready for the next phase, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. So I put the cardboard under the rim and cut a hole in it. Then I put plastic over the rim and around the sides of the cardboard box and put just a little bit of the flushable litter on top.

My poor, traumatized cat did not go to the bathroom for almost 18 hours. I tried to coax him with treats. I put him on top of the toilet seat to show him it was okay, but he jumped down, looked at me with his confused, crossed eyes and meowed at me as if to say, "What the hell is wrong with you, lady?"

This morning, I made him a new cardboard box like the old one, with no hole in the middle. He used it immediately. We've taken a step back for the time being, but I'm not discouraged (yet). Soon, I hope to be free of kitty litter. But not if it's going to make my cat explode.

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I've been lucky enough to hear sneak previews of the new album from The Epoxies, which goes on sale May 17. I can assure you that it totally rules. Plus, as you are undoubtedly aware, not enough people accessorize with electrical tape. The Epoxies are working hard to fill that gap.

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What kind of American English do you speak?

I speak:
80% General American English
10% Upper Midwestern
10% Yankee
0% Dixie
0% Midwestern

There were some amusing terms in the test. It's interesting to see how language has diverged within this country just based on the 20 questions on this test.

(link via particleman)

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There have been milestones, over the last eight months. First, I could take my walking cast off for short periods of time. I could sleep through the night.

The first time I walked to get coffee without the aid of crutches or a walking boot, I was walking very slowly, concentrating on "walking normally" without a limp. I must have looked either incredibly depressed, or as though I was about to faint because a woman stopped on the street and shouted, "Are you okay?!?" I laughed at her hysteria and told her I was rehabilitating my broken ankle. It would be another two weeks before I attempted such a daring, two block walk unaided.

There were other milestones: I could raise up on my toes, if I was careful. I graduated from physical therapy. Then I could jump on a trampoline. I tried jogging and it wasn't horrible. I went dancing again. Then I went dancing and didn't even think about my ankle.

This week, at long last, I feel I've come full circle: I played volleyball again for the first time in over seven months. I hadn't played since July 27th at approximately 6:30pm, which is when and how my ankle broke in the first place. It was SO EXCITING, playing again. It was phenomenal. My whole team probably thinks I'm a huge dork because I had an enormous grin on my face the whole time and kept jumping around just because I can. Ahh, the sweet freedom of jumping and running and playing. Never underestimate it.

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In spite of it all (see below), I'm happy because I get to go see Peter Murphy in May. And Peter Murphy totally rules.

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It's difficult to ignore the constant warnings that our mode of life is, simply put, not sustainable. Think about what those two words mean: not sustainable. We can't go on like this.

For me, the realization hit a few years back. I was ridinig the Max train into downtown Portland, looking at the buildings, the skyline, the houses. I thought to myself, "This is enough. We need to slow down now." Of course we didn't. Nobody makes a quick buck by slowing down (unless it's the slowing down production in order to raise prices for a product).

But then you read an article like this exerpt from The Long Emergency, and it makes a hundred thoughts simultaneously contradict one another all at the same time. Because what if he's right? Should I do tons of traveling now while I have the chance, or save my money and buy some land where I can have a garden and maybe a cow? How likely is he to be right? Should I ignore the situation like everyone else and hope it doesn't come to pass? Or should I follow through on my threats to ride my bike to work every day? Should I start filling cans of gas and storing them in my garage?

Then there are the more practical questions that are a little less selfish: How can we make it so we are sustainable? Would that our country's leaders would, you know, pay attention to these kinds of things. What if right now, 20 years before the predicted failure of our way of life, we started to change things? What if it wasn't only the doomsday environmentalists who smell like patchouli and smoke too much pot who stood up and said, "Hey, listen up: this isn't going to work and we need to change a few things?" What if it was community leaders of all walks of life? What if our government was more interested in making existence good for the long term, and not just for their terms of office?

We all know a lot about marketing -- we're innundated with it enough. We know that it's totally possible to get the citizens of this country, or any country, to buy into an idea and change their behavior. Remember pogs? Leg warmers? The rise in popularity of SUVs? And those weren't even good ideas. Think of the how the U.S. pulled together during WWII; think of all that was accomplished then.

I mean, think of the massive amounts of brain power that exist in this country, of our capacity for innovation. Holy cow, if there was funding and facilities for research, we could come up with some truly amazing things (as we have already). If we had a good Rosie the Riveter spirit behind a movement to make our way of living less harmful to the earth and more feasible in the long-term, I don't doubt that we'd be able to prove all the doomsdayers wrong. At the heart of it, isn't that what we all want?

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Babies!
Seriously, they're everywhere. The world is crazy over babies. For instance, there's Elliott, the 11lb wonder-baby. There are the Price triplets -- adorable times three! And Kimberly, I haven't seen, but she looks like a real cutie. Links are on the side so we can all watch them grow up via the magic of the internet.

If I've forgotten you, it's because you either haven't had your baby yet, or I don't know about your blog. Or because I forgot and I'm a terrible friend. That happens sometimes, too.

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If you look at this, you can see where it was that the worms from my last post were collected. Zoom all the way in, and you can see my elementary school in the bottom, left corner. There was a path leading from the green grasses of the school to the dead grass above, right next to the big white-topped building (which used to be Sprouse Ritz, but is something else now). It was on that path, probably pretty close to where the cars are parked diagonally at the edge of the parking lot. That's where the worms surprised and delighted us, resulting in a very muddy underside of my umbrella. We were walking home from school.

At least, that's how I remember it.

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My sister was a lot more persuasive than I. She was older and understood something it would take me awhile to grasp: fairness and logic are generally two separate things.

"But we always put the worms in my umbrella!" I said on this particular day. It seemed obvious to me that it was her turn. My parents had taught us to share, to trade. Sometimes this line of reasoning worked, but not usually. For a long time, it was all I had.

"I'm taller," she said, "so I can hold my umbrella over both of us while you keep the worms in yours."

I turned it over in my six or seven year old mind. I looked at her through the clear plastic of my umbrella, which was the deep kind, the kind that wraps around your head. It was hard to refute her argument. She spoke the truth. I shrugged, turned over my umbrella, and squatted down to start collecting worms. Between the two of us, we caught a great deal of rain water and about 10 or 15 worms.

Pleased with our find, we wandered home, my umbrella inverted and bumping against my legs. In the end, it was easier to just get wet than to crowd under the same umbrella, and that suited me just fine.

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The little voice inside me that composes words for blog posts, stories, the occasional crappy poem... that voice is quiet lately. The business of day-to-day life is overriding. Encroaching.

Or maybe it's just that so much of my brain is occupied with attempting to get rid of the ants in my kitchen. I've done my research, so I know a few tricks. I've tried Terro, for sweet eating ants. I've tried some Raid or generic Walgreens (can't remember which) bait for sweet eating, grease eating, and odorous ants. They won't go near it. I've hung bay leaves in my cupboards. I've mixed boric acid powder with sugar and water. I've mixed it with peanut butter and jelly. I've left out cornmeal and salt and yeast. They don't like any of it. What they like, apparently, is to crawl around in my cupboards, these ants. What they like is to annoy the living shit out of me.

I'm going to keep trying until I can find something they like. Something deadly. Something deadly that my cat won't find and try to eat. It's not enough to just keep them away or squash the little scout ants that come into my house. It's time to destroy the whole colony.

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